I saw this on Peter Rollins site, and I was so impacted by it, I had to share it here. It is a perfect parable concerning Christ and the Church and the nature of faith in a largely ugly world. Here are my thoughts after viewing this.

I like that the ‘real’ world looked gray, dismal, and industrial. Their dream was the beautiful place. I also love that she was behind glass, in effect, in a different world, a world of certain luxuries (wine, fine linen, nice hair that wouldn’t keep outside.) So also, in the civilized west we often live in an isolated pocket of luxury in a largely harsh world.

The man first saw the woman, and was simply mesmerized and undone. I think we have to begin to understand that God sees us this way. Condemning us for our mistakes is the last thing He wants. It is love we are talking about, and even romantic love or a father’s love are only shadows of reality. This means that His actual love is greater than these things, these things are only pointers to a greater love.

Further, in the dream, their love was stronger than the realities that kept them apart. They destroyed the barriers to come together. After having been so affected by each other, which was more real, the dream or reality?

Our beliefs concerning a God who is impossibly good, who acts always from love, who accomplishes miracles, is possibly laughable when viewed by the gray and industrial wasteland of the world. It sometimes seems even to me to be as ephemeral as this dream; does no one else see Him looking at me with such intense love? Who am I? Did any of this really happen? Yet the desire, the beauty, the hope of my romance with Him has the power to shatter reality, to overcome great barriers, and is more real than physical reality itself.

The world looks at the lack of physical evidence, and says there is no miracle here. It is all a dream. I say, it is the thing that touches more deeply, that colors all of my experience, and is therefore far more substantive than the fading background of dismal physical realities.